Many believe Geoff Keighley is the reason for the failure of Highguard. However, senior developers say the game would have failed anyway, and it has little to do with the host of the Game Awards, who simply presented the game.
The raid shooter Highguard is seen as highly controversial among players and failed to meet its high expectations at release: of the approximately 100,000 players at launch, only a few thousand remain, according to the numbers on SteamDB.
Many see one person as the “executioner” of the game: Geoff Keighley, the host of the Game Awards. Keighley presents the shooter Highguard at the end of the Game Awards on December 11, 2025. Until shortly before release, it was unclear what kind of game one could expect from Highguard.
However, the release of Highguard turned into a debacle, and many say Geoff Keighley is responsible for it, as he raised expectations so high. Now, Michael Douse, Publishing Director of Baldur’s Gate 3, has clearly spoken against this assumption. According to Douse, the problem was never Keighley. And another developer adds: Highguard was never a good game.
Douse and other senior developers defend Keighley
This is what Douse says: In a post on X.com, Douse stated that Keighley should not be blamed for the release chaos. The issues are much more complex, according to him. Blaming everything on one person would not be a good idea. He explains:
The layoffs at Highguard are, like many others, a sad reminder of the economic instability of an industry that demands much but promises little. It is immature to blame a man for showing a trailer in his show and shows little understanding of the industry.
Eric Arraché, founder of Critical Hits, adds that Keighley even gave the game the best chance, but the game just wasn’t good, and Keighley cannot be blamed for that:
If anything, [Keighley] gave Highguard the best chance it could have. The problem was that the game was not that good (the map was too big for 3v3), and I believe there were some server issues on PC on launch day. Aside from that, it seems that companies are pulling out much faster since the Concord fiasco.
That Highguard can be a lot of fun despite its problems, explained MeinMMO editor Benedict Grothaus in his article. Many just play the game incorrectly and therefore do not have fun with it.
From “One Last Thing” to the next industry meme: MeinMMO editor-in-chief Leya Jankowski analyzes how the Highguard case exposes the dangerous tension between idealistic game development and ruthless algorithmic logic of 2026: From “One Last Thing” to the Concord meme: Highguard is the fatal misjudgment of a market that lives on anger.
